It was previously understood that non-volatile memory integrated circuits were too slow to be used in main memory of server computer systems. However, because of improvements in non-volatile memory integrated circuits, particularly for the latest generation of NOR FLASH EEPROM (electrically erasable programmable read only memory) integrated circuits, read access times have been reduced.
Additionally, a non-volatile memory integrated circuit may conserve power over that of the typical dynamic random access memory (DRAM) integrated circuit without significant read access time penalties.
Cache memory may be used to improve read and write access times of data with main memory. A computer system may include a cache coherency protocol and system to avoid stale data and maintain current data within cache memory.